National Day
by WhiteWings9
Summary: Arthur decides to end his strenuous marriage to Yao. Part of the Nineteen Eighty-Four!AU Two Plus Two Equals Five. England/China. Angst. Brief smut. Dysfunctional relationship. Dystopia.


**National Day**

The saucepan lid started rattling as the salted water reached to a boil; Arthur turned down the heat and returned to peeling the potatoes. The timer on the oven beeped to signal it had finished pre-heating; Arthur paused with the peeling, put in the chicken he had prepared on the tray into the oven, and returned once more to the potatoes. It took him a moment to realise he had not reset the timer, by which time he had no idea how long the chicken had already been cooking. He let out a curse. He had no choice but to take a wild stab at the remaining time the chicken needed before it was ready and set the timer accordingly.

Arthur was not a particularly careful cook, but today he was especially distracted because of what he had prepared to do. The brown envelope containing all the necessary documents lay under the sofa, ready to to be extracted and presented at the right moment. His lips twitched up in a bitter smile.

There was never going to be a right moment.

Yao returned home just as Arthur was laying the table. He was early tonight as he never was any other night, but tonight was the eve of National Day. A public holiday. His only acknowledgment of Arthur was a brusque nod before disappearing into their bedroom. Arthur finished laying the table and rushed back to the kitchen in time to curse at the potatoes for boiling over.

Dinner was a silent affair as the couple worked through too-dry chicken with undercooked vegetables and watery mash. At least the wine made up for the sorry meal, Arthur thought as he drained his third glass at the table. He caught Yao staring at him. Yao shovelled one more mouthful of chicken before getting up and carrying his plate into the kitchen. Arthur poured himself another glass of wine as he listened to Yao scrape most of his dinner into the bin.

They sat on opposite ends of the sofa, Yao working on his tablet and Arthur pretending to read on his e-reader, the envelope weighing heavily on his mind. Around midnight, Yao finally set aside his tablet and took off his glasses. Arthur's eyes flitted up.

"There's something you want to say," Yao sighed. It wasn't a question. He folded his glasses and set it carefully into its cuishioned case.

Arthur's eyes dropped back to the e-reader in his lap.

"S'not important, it can wait," he muttered. All the false courage he had been building up seemed to have drained from him as he sobered over the course of the evening.

Yao was staring at him again, and Arthur was more than aware that his eyes were not moving across the screen. His ruse was not going to fool Yao for long. He gave up pretending and closed the cover of his e-reader.

"Let's call it a night."

It had been a long time since they coupled. Since the last National Day if memory served correct, Arthur thought with another bitter smile. That was what their marriage of six years had been reduced to; cold looks, hardly a word spoken between them, and annual fucks on the day celebrating the establishment of the Party.

"You're hurting me!" Yao hissed as Arthur thrust into him a little too quickly. When Arthur made no move to correct his pace, Yao gritted his teeth and suffered the remainder of sex in silence. Arthur knew that Yao considered his keeping silent as some gross form of being a dutiful husband. It wasn't fair, but that knowledge drove Arthur to take all he could at the expense of Yao's comfort. He spent the rest of his waking hours stewing in shame as Yao slept with his back turned to him.

Breakfast was a similarly silent and grudging affair, the memory of last night's unsatisfactory sex lingering like a sour aftertaste to their already pitiful attempts at a functioning relationship. Arthur made a concentrated effort to show he was sorry, doing the washing up and other little chores without prompt or complain, but Yao was not in a forgiving mood and took to ignoring him. They spent most of the day on opposite ends of the sofa again, Yao on his tablet and Arthur on his e-reader, each pretending to be busy.

"You had something you wanted to say," Yao finally spoke, curtly. It took a while for Arthur to realise that he was referring to their conversation the night before.

"Er, yes." A lump had formed in his throat, causing his voice to come out strained. He tried again. "There's… something I've been meaning to ask. Something, I think, that you've been meaning to ask, too."

Yao was staring at him over his glasses in that uncomfortably unblinking way he had. Arthur glared at his e-reader, not daring to look up, not trusting himself to look up.

"…This isn't working, is it?"

Yao blinked, surprised. "What do you mean?"

"This!" Arthur said with a vague wave of his hand. "Our marriage, our relationship. Us!"

He looked up then, searching to meet Yao's gaze, but Yao averted his eyes.

"Well?" he prompted as Yao stared at his tablet, eyes fixed to a spot. It was an unexpected turn of tables.

"I don't know what you m-"

"Oh don't be stupid!" Arthur felt himself quickly losing his temper. He tossed his e-reader aside and turned to face Yao square on. "We haven't been a functioning marriage for years now, we hardly even talk to each other! The truth is you can barely stand to look at me much less touch m-"

"And what is it you want to say, Arthur?" Yao cut him short.

Arthur faltered slightly, but quickly regained his composure. He bent down to the floor and fished out the envelope from under the sofa, tossing it onto the coffee table. Yao stared at it, his eyes widening as understanding dawned on him.

"I've been thinking that maybe we should consider a divorce," Arthur muttered, a little needlessly as the envelope came with a stamp from the civil registry.

Their eyes met briefly, Arthur's sullen but determined, Yao's unreadable. Arthur did not know quite how he expected Yao to react to his proposal, but it certainly wasn't the following.

"Is there someone else?"

"What?"

"I said, _is there someone else_?"

Yao's voice was the coldest he had ever heard and sharp with suspicion, cutting right through him. Arthur gaped a little, astounded.

"No, there is no-one else," he ground out, furious and a little hurt at the accusation.

The tension that had been strung so tight a moment ago seemed to leak out of the room.

Slowly, defeated, Yao slid the envelope closer towards him and pulled out the documents, adjusting his glasses. Arthur stood and watched as Yao pored over the print. After a moment he had to excuse himself to the kitchen on the pretext of making tea, suddenly finding that he could not quite watch the visible destruction on the face of the man he still loved so dearly.

* * *

Day 11 of the 30 Days Of Writing A Drabble (Or Whatever) A Day Challenge.

Part of the Nineteen Eighty-Four!AU 2 + 2 = 5.


End file.
